Bearing Faithful Witness

Commandment 9

“When [the devil] lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).^[1]

“For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (Jn 18:37).

We live in an age oversaturated by speech. It may, perhaps, be better to say that we live in a age oversaturated by communicative spectacles: the spectacle of the written word (via communications media), the meme, the photo and short-form video; popular mass media, the plethora of blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos; and the ubiquity of sound in public spaces, pervasive (or invasive) advertising, and the omnipresence of digital devices. We live in an age of ceaseless prattle. In the words of Robert Cardinal Sarah, we live under “the dictatorship of noise.”^[2]

In an age such as ours, we would do well to attend to the ninth commandment. In our cultural onslaught of communication and noise, we are tempted to comply and contribute to all manner of false witnessing. The final section of this article will introduce a number of contemporary applications of the ninth commandment. Before turning to these applications, a brief biblical theology of speech is in order.

Biblical Theology of Witness

The immediate context of the ninth commandment is the social organization of the nation of Israel:

If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. (Deut 19:16-20)

Truth-telling is the foundation of communal life. As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “it would be impossible for men to live together, unless they believed one another, as declaring the truth one to another.”^[3] To forfeit the communication of truth in speech is to cause a breach in the community. It was the duty of the Israelites to bear true witness to their neighbors, and so to preserve the community. Of course, the significance of this commandment must extend beyond the judicial context to include the entirety of the Israelites’ interpersonal communication. Thus, in an important chapter-length gloss on the Decalogue from Leviticus 19, the Israelites are commanded: “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another” (Lev 19:11), bringing the logic of the eighth and ninth commandments together. To bear false witness against one’s neighbor is to deprive him of something he is due. It is, in that sense, to steal from him.

The Biblical account of speech develops across the Old Testament. By the time we arrive at the Wisdom Literature, it becomes clear that speech plays a fundamental role in the good life: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (Prov 18:21). Many such phrases from the book of Proverbs can be found. The fool is characterized by a haphazard and irreverent use of speech. In the realm of speech, the fool is, as usual, selfishly concerned with the utilitarian value of words. The fool is verbose; he is heedless in pouring forth speech. In a verse I love sharing with my students, the author of Proverbs writes, “When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent” (Prov 10:19).

Within the New Testament, descriptions of the importance of speech abound. Jesus himself offers the chilling warning: “on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt 12:36-37). Truthful, wise, edifying speech was a fundamental part of healthy communal life for the first churches. “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another,” St. Paul writes (Eph 4:25). We could hardly think of a better way of describing the connection between community and communication than this: we are members one of another, so speak truthfully to each other. Paul continues (intriguingly, after warning against stealing):

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Eph 4:29-32)

Paul highlights that there are ways other than lying that we can sin with the tongue: clamor, slander, and malice don’t necessarily deal with the truth of one’s statements per se, but rather their manner and purpose. The issue for St. Paul is that our speech would give grace and build up. Why might this be? The answer will require a broader exploration of the purpose of human speech, for which we turn initially to St. James, who has much to say about the significance and perils of human speech.

In James 3:1-12, the apostle warns those who would desire to teach, for they will be faced with more severe judgment. Central to the dangers of the vocation of teachers is the power of the tongue: “the tongue is a small member, but it boasts of great things” (Jas 3:5). James pulls no punches in his critique of the wayward tongue. “The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness . . . no human being can tame his tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (Jas 3:6, 8). The problem with the tongue is that it is used for the worship of God and misused for the cursing of man. “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers,” James writes, “these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?” (Jas 3:10-11).

James hints at the purpose of speech by highlighting the way our tongues are conscripted for the praise of God. This vocation should inform the entire activity of human speech: because our tongues are made for the worship of God, we must be wise and careful stewards of our speech. Something made for such lofty heights as this must be guarded carefully lest it degenerate in diabolical fashion. Indeed, the titular quotations of this post already pointed us in this direction: the devil is the father of lies, and the purpose for which Christ was born into the world was to bear witness to the truth.

The essence of sin, according to St. Augustine, is a lie.^[4] Lying is a distorted act of the will; it is the corruption of a gift, the misuse of a good. This is true of every sin in its own way, but lying is archetypal of sin because lying is the deliberate falsification of the purpose of a created good (speech) for the sake of some improper end (i.e., something other than creation’s return to God).

Speech at its most perfect use is confession, not confession merely in the sense of acknowledging our sins (though certainly that), but confession in the sense of returning the gift of speech to its Maker. Confession here meaning acknowledgement of God. Of course, the natural order does this, we are told, without fail: “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy-work” (Ps 19:1). What makes this vocation unique for human beings (and angels) is that we bear the dignity and responsibility of freedom. We don’t just “naturally” return to God apart from the resolve of our wills. In other words, we must choose to confess to God, and – tragically – we are also free not to choose such confession.

The devil’s first speech in the Bible is a mendacious one: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’? . . .You will not surely die” (Gen 3:1, 4). Here is speech that has been bent away from its purpose, speech aimed not at confession but at renunciation. On the contrary, the Son of God was the confession of God in his very Person: all his words and deeds bore faithful witness to the truth of things. He was the light that came into the world, falsely accused and yet faithful in his witness of God. The devil seized speech for his own purposes, and we often follow in his train. The Word incarnate returned speech to its Maker, confessing God even from the cross: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Lk 23:46).

Faithful human speech, then, is confession. Confession of God, first, and then confession of the truth of his creation. Breaking the ninth commandment involves any breach of this fundamental vocation for human speech, whether it be in the courtroom, public square, church community, or even within one’s own heart. The ninth commandment forbids dishonesty and enjoins truth-telling and living.

The Ninth Commandment Today

A contemporary reflection on the ninth commandment should consider cultural and interpersonal compromises of the duty to bear truthful witness. Thus, I will consider first the cultural ascendency of lies and then consider some difficulties in interpersonal truth-telling in the modern world. Finally, I will consider the fulfilment of the human vocation of speech, especially in the context of the church’s worship of God.

The Ninth Commandment and the Culture of Lies

When the twentieth-century soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn commented on the cultural conditions that made totalitarianism possible, he highlighted the near ubiquitous complicity of his people in the lies of the Soviet regime. The violence of twentieth-century totalitarianism – in all its forms – ran on the gasoline of lies. Solzhenitsyn wrote the following: “To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally—Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit—and this suffices as our fealty.”^[5]

Solzhenitsyn would later give a famous commencement address at Harvard in 1978, where he issued a warning concerning the subtle ways Western countries had prepared themselves for their own kind of totalitarianism. Surely, he assumed, it would take a different form than the overt totalitarianism of the first half of the twentieth century, but it would be no less inhumane. He criticized Western societies for their spiritual mediocrity and their greedy materialism. These conditions render the Western world singularly ill-equipped to combat a culture of lies, since Western societies are unprepared to suffer for the truth.

Psychologist and cultural critic Jordan Peterson drew attention to the importance of truth-telling for resistance to totalitarianism by highlighting the character-formation at work in our ordinary interactions. By saying “no” when it needs to be said, “you transform yourself into someone who can say no when it needs to be said.”^[6] “If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character. If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will, inevitably. You will hide, but there will be no place left to hide. And then you will find yourself doing terrible things.”^[7]

The greatest twentieth-century critics of totalitarianism– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn among them – describe weakness of character and complicity in lies as the foundation of unjust political regimes.^[8] Weakness of character makes us susceptible to complicity in lies. One contemporary theologian speaks of the “mendacity of moral euphemisms that are so pervasive in our contemporary culture.”^[9] “Having an affair,” “terminating a pregnancy,” and many other such euphemisms, “allow us conveniently to practice a form of moral mendaciousness without explicitly lying about anything.”^[10]

Thus, the proscriptive side of the ninth commandment would preclude participation in the culture of lies. It would involve refusing to agree with a particular proposition because it is the popular or acceptable point of view. It would involve, perhaps, refusing the moral euphemisms which allow us to evade the truth of the matter in acts of adultery, abortion, etc. What, then, of the prescriptive side of the commandment? How shall we bear true witness to our neighbor in our noisy age?

In the first place, we would do so by refusing the demonizing rhetoric of ideology. Our neighbor across the political aisle may hold deeply problematic views, but that is no warrant for failing to measure up to the standard of charity in our speech. Of course, truth-telling means uttering the truth even when it is unpopular to do so, but it is a mistake to think that the means of proclaiming the truth do not matter. The means are part of the message. The New Testament injunction is to “speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15), which is a rather different thing than “owning the libs,” even if it means uttering a very damning judgment on a practice or viewpoint of our political opponent.

Furthermore, it is worth considering one more way we can be complicit in breaches of the ninth commandment via social media and other news platforms. The contemporary press preys on our ill-formed desire to know, what earlier Christian tradition would call curiositas (the disordered desire for knowledge, opposed to the virtue of studiositas). In the words of Solzhenitsyn, commenting on a popular slogan regarding people’s right to know even the private lives of public figures, “this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.”^[11] This implies that we should refuse any personal contribution to vain talk online. Our world simply does not need more valueless speech.

The ninth commandment would have us chasten our desire to know, to speak, and even to listen. Consuming, re-posting, and personally publishing lies or uncharitable speech are popular ways of breaking the ninth commandment today. In sum, then, the ninth commandment forbids participation in the culture of lies both by refusing popular falsehoods and by enjoining us to speak from charity in public. It also instructs us to speak only when necessary, so as to avoid superfluous contributions to the prattle of our age.

Interpersonal Communication and the Ninth Commandment

Directly bearing false witness against one’s neighbor is only one way of breaching the ninth commandment. Within the catechisms of the Christian tradition, one can find practices as diverse as the following addressed by the ninth commandment:

• Rash judgment. Assuming as true insufficiently founded evidence for the moral fault of a neighbor.
• Detraction and calumny. Disclosing information regarding another in order to harm their reputation (whether true, in the case of detraction, or false in calumny).
• Flattery. Inflating another person’s pride through insincere praise or, in the more historic sense of the term, using words as instruments of power over another.^[12]
• Tale-bearing and gossip. The spreading of rumors or negative information about another person with the intent of harming their reputation.
• Breaching lawful promises. Failing to make good on one’s word.^[13]

Many more such practices are named and discussed in the catechetical tradition, though they all reduce to speech that is contrary to the rule of charity. That brings us back, at last, to the biblical theology of witness we considered above. To St. James, the scandal of the fallen tongue is that it takes the instrument made for praise of God and turns it into an instrument for cursing God’s image. The solution? Proximately, the solution may well be a resolve to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,” in James’ words (Jas 1:19). One of my professors used to say that in our age of vexed communication, we should always ask one more question of our interlocutor than we think we need. Understanding precedes criticism, and understanding can only be had when charity is first extended. In our interpersonal communication, we need to be sure to truly hear before we speak.

Conclusion: Bearing Faithful Witness

Finally, we should heed the words of Paul: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col 3:16). When thus indwelt by the saving Word, we are far more likely to avoid the misuse of words in our relations with fellow Christians. We are, furthermore, reconciled to the original vocation of the tongue, the confession of God.

Christian reflection on the ninth commandment must go beyond the merely proscriptive refusal to bear false witness and should include the injunction positively to bear faithful witness. In the Greek of the New Testament, we are called upon to give our μαρτύριον (martureon), our witness, from which we get our word “martyr.” The martyr is one whose very life bore faithful witness to Christ. When presented with the option to save his life by renouncing Christ and doing obeisance to Caesar, the martyr chose instead to bear witness. It cost him his life, but he was willing to pay the price.

What kind of preparation must the contemporary church undergo to be ready to pay that price? This cost is implied in our baptism, but are we ready to render it, should the time come? Or would we be more likely to find a convenient subterfuge, a half-truth, in order to avoid this awful fate? I hope such a fate is a long way off for our civilization. But if it is not, we Christians must be ready to bear faithful witness, even unto death.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise noted, biblical references in this post will be taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Crossway, 2001. ↑
2. Robert Cardinal Sarah with Nicolas Diat, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, trans. Michael J. Miller, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017). ↑
3. ST II-II, Q. 109, A. 3, Obj. 1. https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.II-II.Q109.A3.C. ↑
4. Paul Griffiths, Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010), 87. ↑
5. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Live Not By Lies,” https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies. ↑
6. Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, (UK: Penguin Random House, 2018), 212. ↑
7. Peterson, 12 Rules, 212. ↑
8. George Orwell describes this poignantly in his critique of the cowardice among English intelligentsia in his proposed preface to Animal Farm, published in 1972. See George Orwell, “The Freedom of the Press,” https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/. ↑
9. Reinhard Hütter, “The Tongue – Fallen and Restored,” in I Am the Lord Your God: Christian Reflections on the Ten Commandments, ed. by Carl E. Braaten and Christopher R. Seitz, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), 200. ↑
10. Hütter, “The Tongue,” 200. ↑
11. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart,” https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart. ↑
12. See Josef Pieper’s perceptive essay, “The Abuse of Language and The Abuse of Power,” in Josef Pieper, The Weight of Belief: Essays on Faith in the Modern Age, trans. Jan van Heurck, (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2019), 223-247. ↑
13. This list is derived from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2475-2487 and from the Westminster Larger Catechism, qq. 143-145. ↑